Rossier Audiences

Rossier, LAUSD, other area schools, partner for teacher success

NEWS RELEASE

Los Angeles, Calif. January 27, 2014 — The University of Southern California Rossier School of Education (USC Rossier) has announced local partnerships with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and three major K-12 school organizations – The Partnership for LA Schools, KIPP LA Schools and Green Dot Public Schools. These partnerships will provide a broad range of benefits, including scholarships and professional development opportunities for their schools’ teachers, as well as greater access to top teaching talent for the partners.

To date, USC Rossier has established similar partnerships with 14 districts and groups across the nation.

USC Rossier provides the teachers and staff from its partner schools with a minimum $5,000 scholarship if they are accepted and enrolled in USC Rossier Online programs. Partner schools also benefit from the following:

Ability to observe potential job candidates: USC Rossier master’s candidates will complete their student teaching, also known as Guided Practice, at a Southern California area Rossier partner school. This provides these schools the benefit of observing and evaluating teacher candidates in action to help them effectively identify the best potential future hires.

USC Rossier Commitment: Rossier has made a groundbreaking pledge to ensure the success of all of its graduates by supporting their continuous improvement and professional needs for the span of their teaching careers. Any alumnus facing a professional challenge who reaches out to USC Rossier will receive a plan for improvement from the Rossier faculty “Rapid Response” team.

Teacher Recruitment: Partner school districts and organizations will have access to USC Rossier teacher online portfolios and can tap into this network to recruit highly qualified teachers.

Access to USC Rossier educational seminars: USC Rossier holds educational and topical seminars on the web led by its expert faculty. These webinars cover such topics as Common Core Standards, gifted education and arts integration.

“We believe that our teacher graduates are among the world’s best,” said USC Rossier Dean Karen Symms Gallagher. “We have always worked collaboratively with schools here in Los Angeles, but these new formalized partnerships will help ensure that the best teachers are working with local students to make sure they learn and succeed.”

“This unique partnership affords LAUSD a wonderful opportunity to work closely with USC pre-service educators and the Rossier School on teacher preparation and teacher quality,” said LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. “It will provide tremendous benefits to our youth for many years to come.”

For more information on USC Rossier’s newest school partners, please visit the following websites:

About The Partnership for LA Schools

The Partnership is a 501(c)(3) non-profit created in 2007 through a unique collaboration between former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to transform some of the lowest performing schools in Los Angeles and to serve as a scalable transformation model for other historically underserved schools.

About KIPP LA Schools

KIPP LA Schools’ mission is to teach the academic skills, foster the intellectual habits, and cultivate the character traits needed for its students to thrive in high school, college, and life. KIPP LA was founded in 2003, with the opening of KIPP Los Angeles College Preparatory School and KIPP Academy of Opportunity middle schools. KIPP LA Schools currently operates nine schools in South and East Los Angeles, two of which opened in August 2013. KIPP LA Schools serves over 3,000 students in our classrooms and nearly 1,000 more students through our KIPP Through College program, which supports our alumni who are in high school and college. By 2018, KIPP LA will grow to 17 schools and triple the number of students and alumni it serves. To learn more, visit www.kippla.org.

About Green Dot Public Schools

Green Dot Public Schools is a non-profit organization founded upon the idea that every child in every community deserves to go to a great school.

Purposely located in some of Los Angeles’ highest need communities, our academic model has resulted in our students being nearly four times more likely to graduate and be ready for college than students at neighboring schools. This past June, we graduated the most students of any charter management organization in the nation for the second year in a row. Since our founding in 2000, more than 90% of our graduates have been accepted to college.

From a rigorous, college-prep curriculum inside the classroom to meeting challenges outside the classroom – we do whatever it takes to prepare all students for college, leadership and life.

About the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education

The mission of the USC Rossier School of Education (ross-EAR) is to improve learning in urban education locally, nationally, and globally. Rossier leads the field in innovative, collaborative solutions to improve education outcomes. Our work is fieldbased, in the classroom, and online, and reflects a diversity of perspectives and experiences. We pride ourselves on innovation in all our programs, preparing teachers, administrators, and educational leaders who are change agents. We support the most forward-thinking scholars and researchers, whose work is having direct impact on student success in K-12 schools and higher education. We are leaders in using cuttingedge technology to scale up our quality programs for maximum impact.